All posts tagged Albany

The mayor of Rome Ignazio Marino, right, poses with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, his wife Chirlane McCray and their children Dante and Chiara at the balcony of Rome’s city hall before their meeting on July 20, 2014.

ANDREAS SOLARO/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The de Blasio family is taking a nine-day jaunt to the Southwestern and Western U.S., City Hall said Monday afternoon.

The New York City Mayor and his family is leaving town Tuesday. City Hall didn’t specify which states they would visit or whether the family would travel by plane or car. Read More »

Marni Turner, and her 10-year-old poodle, “Dougie,” visit at an outdoor cafe on New York’s Upper West Side in May.

Richard Drew/Associated Press

ALBANY — Partisan tussles here have stalled rent-control laws and tax policies as the legislative session draws to a close, but one bill has really gone to the dogs.

A bill permitting people to dine at restaurants with pooches passed through both chambers of the Legislature Tuesday morning with bipartisan support.

Introduced earlier this year, the bill only pertains to outdoor dining areas, and it gives restaurant owners the option to ban the practice.

“I think this is a win for dogs, because they don’t have to sit at home without their owners,” said Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, the Manhattan Democrat who introduced the bill earlier this year. Read More »

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio discusses rent regulations after a parade Sunday.

Peter J. Smith for The Wall Street Journal

With rent regulations set to expire at midnight, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio railed against the gridlock in Albany, saying hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers could lose their homes if lawmakers fail to act.

“It would mean for some people they literally would not be able to live in their apartments, they would not be able to live in their neighborhood,” Mr. de Blasio said on WCBS 880 Monday morning.

“Right now while they’re all disagreeing, this thing is counting down to midnight.”

The mayor said Governor Andrew Cuomo should push lawmakers to at least pass a short-term extension of the rent law, which covers more than 2 million New Yorkers. But he said the city would continue to “hemorrhage” affordable housing if the legislation isn’t ultimately strengthened. Read More »

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks to the media and supporters in April.

Seth Wenig/Associated Press

A majority of New York state voters believe all Albany elected officials should be voted out of office to provide a fresh start following a rash of public corruption scandals, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday.

Fifty-five percent of voters say Albany should start with a clean slate, the poll found.

State Sen. Liz Krueger and Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell are expected this week to introduce a bill that would halt a Cuomo administration policy auto-deleting state emails after 90 days.

Ms. Krueger’s bill shook up the Capitol last week when it was announced. It comes as Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature have sparred over transparency and ethics, and as Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email account during her tenure as secretary of state has sparked debate.

Told of the bill, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo tweeted that he hopes it subjects the Legislature to Freedom of Information Act laws, which it isn’t currently subject to. Ms. Krueger said it will.

On Tuesday, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Democrat, was noncommittal, saying he’ll discuss the issue with his conference. Senate President Dean Skelos, a Long Island Republican, said on Monday he is supportive of Ms. Krueger’s initiative to change the auto-deletion policy.

In an interview, Ms. Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, discussed her concerns about the Cuomo policy, Ms. Clinton’s email issue, and gathering GOP support for her initiative. Edited excerpts follow. Read More »

Sheldon Silver, the former New York state Assembly speaker, pleaded not guilty to corruption charges in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Tuesday.

His lawyers moved for a mistrial based on “improper extrajudicial statements” by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose office is prosecuting the case.

Mr. Silver was indicted last week on three counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud and extortion. On Tuesday, wearing a charcoal suit and a red tie, the former speaker, who remains a Democratic assemblyman, arrived in Judge Valerie Caproni’s courtroom accompanied by his lawyers, Steven Molo and Joel Cohen. Read More »

A majority of New York state registered voters want part-time legislators to be required to fully disclose the sources and nature of their outside income, according to a poll to be published Tuesday by Siena College.

The poll also found that 51% of respondents believe that corruption is a “very serious” problem in state government. A similar percentage believe that a set of proposals by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, including some that address outside-income disclosure, would reduce such corruption.

Most respondents, however, said that passing an on-time state budget is more important than passing Mr. Cuomo’s ethics proposals. And half said that his threat of delaying the budget to force the legislature to pass the ethics package is “but an idle political threat designed to make himself look good,” said Siena pollster Steven Greenberg.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said Gov. Andrew Cuomo is free to answer questions about his progressing public-corruption investigations, in an interview set to run Tuesday afternoon on MSNBC.

Last summer, Mr. Cuomo’s office responded to questions about Mr. Bharara’s investigation into the Cuomo administration’s dealings with the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption by saying: “As I believe the U.S. attorney has made it clear that ongoing public dialogue is not helpful to his investigation, we will have no additional comment on the matter.”

(Mr. Cuomo’s office has also said it is cooperating with the investigation.)

Asked about that comment by MSNBC’s Ari Melber, Mr. Bharara, according to a transcript of the interview reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, said: “People are able to exercise their public role in the way that they see fit. They’re allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights. I think it is a different thing to say that people shouldn’t be talking to potential witnesses in the case when prosecutors and F.B.I. agents and other investigators are looking at something. But I don’t think I or anyone else has ever said that any particular person shouldn’t be talking about how he or she made decisions publicly…so, you know, how he wants to interpret what he can and cannot say is up to him.” Read More »

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Cuomo, the incumbent in the race, defeated Ruepublican opponent Rob Astorino. (Kevin Hagen for The Wall Street Journal) Published Credit: Kevin Hagen for The Wall Street Journal

Kevin Hagen for The Wall Street Journal

ALBANY—The annual New Year’s Eve event at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s mansion, in which hundreds of New York state residents are chosen by lottery to have one-on-one time face-time with the governor, has provided thehim with the chance to show off a lighter side; in years past, he’s even served cookies for voters alongside his girlfriend, the celebrity-chef Sandra Lee. Read More »

The last remaining Republican New York state senator who voted in favor of gay marriage was ousted from the Legislature by voters Tuesday, a defeat helped along by a conservative party that worked against the other same-sex nuptials supporters in the Senate.

Mark Grisanti, the GOP senator, was one of four Republican senators who broke with his party in 2011 to help Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, to legalize same-sex marriage. Mr. Grisanti was rejected by his Buffalo-area constituents on Tuesday in a four-way race that included a Conservative Party candidate, with area Republicans citing the vote as a decisive factor.

“Grisanti deserved to lose because he doesn’t know right from wrong,” said Carl Paladino, an upstate Republican powerbroker who lost the gubernatorial election to Mr. Cuomo in 2010. “He made a promise to voters that he would not vote for gay marriage, then he came out and said ‘my thinking evolved.’ Well ‘evolved thinking’ doesn’t work for the voters.” Read More »